art and design

Kurian gives life to trash. By carefully arranging found objects like Grecian coffee cups, cans of soda, and long emptied Pez dispensers, he creates large scale sculptures with a sense of novelty and shrine-like effect. It's not all just a matter of curated rubbish, though. Custom elements like a 3-D printed onion, M&Ms emblazoned with the words "frats," "liberals," and straight-up dollar signs are just a few specialty items of note read more

Snow is known primarily as a photographer—for his almost painting-like approach to portraiture—but in recent years the work has multiplied outward from sculptures involving human bones and marble, to large-scale collages, to fashion design (he's working on his eponymous line's third season right now). The man has very little sentimentality when it comes to adhering to one medium read more

Tony Matelli got in trouble earlier this year with students at Wellesley University who opposed the installation of one of his hyper-real artworks, "Sleepwalker." The disturbingly realistic sculpture of a nearly-naked old man wandering across the quad sparked controversy, apprehension, and even fear, though also a bit of laughter. That's the thing with Matelli’s painted bronze sculptures—they're troubling because they’re realistic—but in a skewedsort of way. It makes his art both disturbing and admirable read more

A former industrial designer, McCloud prefers to utilize materials youd expect to see on a construction site, not inside a gallery. His works are made from materials like brass, heated black tar, and the silver paint often used to coat city rooftops. But despite the heaviness of his works, which include enormous metal sculptures and textured paintings, his process is actually quite methodical, influenced by the meditative repetition of traditional Indian woodblock printing and textile production read more

Jamian Juliano-Villani wants her work to be like television. So she draws from TV's visual vocabulary, referencing everything from old propagandist cartoons to anime. Her paintings are acrylic, both painted and airbrushed, sometimes quick to complete and sometimes grueling. She's a night owl, a smoker, and, with a solo show coming up this February at MOCAD, unbelievably prolific read more

Jack Siegel put down the camera for several years to focus on painting, but hes about to return to his spot behind the lens. He prefers the immediacy of the camera, which makes sense considering his ridiculously quick painting style: achieved with only one stroke. At Basel, Siegel shows four paintings, "The Final Four," presented alongside an image he took in 2010. He's a young artist who has already come full circle with plans to start all over again. read more

Zigelbaum's interest in human-computer interaction stems from his extensive research on the subject at MIT, designing computer programs responsive to human touch (think Minority Report). Similar to his work in science, as an artist he uses a combination of lights, sensors, screens, and impressive computer savvy to build light installations that respond to viewers' motions, creating complex environments where the line between spectator and electronic artwork is blurred read more

In this group of ten, Van Hanos is the old school painter. All oil on linen, his paintings vary from the photo-realistic to his most recent piece for Basel, which taps into Dungeons and Dragons-inspired fantasy. His tools of choice might be traditional, but his ideas are anything but read more

Moyer dyes fabric to look like stone, then hangs it side-by-side with its geological doppelganger. The result? Wall-mounted sculptures that draw you in like a 1,000 piece puzzle of the Taj Mahal. Using found pieces of granite and marble, she creates works that demand contemplation—it's art that makes you want to kick off your shoes and stay awhile read more

Collins is best known for his hanging pieces using spray enamel and blocks of color, but at Basel he unveils a new set of sculptures inspired by stuff you'd expect to find in the aisles of CVS. Taking toothbrushes and potato chips and dipping them in bronze, he's taken everyday items and turned them into objects of desire. Contemporary art's supposed to reflect the times, but Collins taken it a step further with material time capsules emblematic of the way we live. read more